Sacrificial Crisis

Definition

The sacrificial crisis is the social condition that precedes the scapegoat mechanism. It is a state of generalized violence and disorder in which mimetic contagion has spread so widely through a community that all social distinctions — hierarchy, kinship, roles, taboos — have ceased to function. The community is on the verge of self-destruction.

Girard developed this concept in Violence and the Sacred (1972) through a reading of Greek tragedy, particularly Sophocles.

The Crisis of Distinctions

In normal social life, distinctions provide order: this person has this role, this object belongs to this category, this relationship has these rules. These distinctions prevent mimetic desire from escalating into universal rivalry, because they channel desire toward permissible objects and away from prohibited ones.

The sacrificial crisis occurs when these distinctions collapse. When mimetic contagion has spread far enough, everyone is both the same as and in conflict with everyone else. The hierarchy that once separated people is gone; the prohibitions that once protected social life have dissolved.

Girard called this the “loss of differences” — a paradoxical state where indifferentiation (everyone is the same) produces maximum violence (everyone is equally a rival).

Resolution: The Surrogate Victim

The sacrificial crisis demands a resolution. In archaic societies, this resolution came through the scapegoat mechanism: the community’s unanimous violence was redirected onto a single surrogate victim. The victim’s death discharged the collective hostility and — through the re-imposition of difference (the sacred/profane distinction, the victim/community distinction) — restored social order.

The Tragic Protagonist

Girard read Greek tragedy as a ritualized representation of the sacrificial crisis and its resolution. The tragic hero is the surrogate victim: a figure who embodies the loss of distinctions (often through incest, parricide, or another confusion of categories) and whose expulsion or death restores social order. Oedipus is Girard’s paradigm case.